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Kenya: 17th Century European Film Comes to Nairobi
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The Nation (Nairobi)
10 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Kamau Mutunga
Nairobi
Crime thrillers, comedies, bio-peeks as well as political and historical dramas will form the bulk of the silver screen menu during this year's European film festival that starts in Nairobi next week.
The film fiesta, now in its 17th edition, will run for three weeks at the Alliance Francaise auditorium and will feature, among others, Italian director Riccardo Milani's 2007 movie, Piano Solo, that was partly filmed in Kenya.
And for Sh30-a-flick, film-lovers will get the chance to watch the cinematic beauty of acclaimed offerings from 18 European countries from May 14.
Since its inception in 1991, the European festival has been attracting huge crowds of film-lovers, largely due to screening that is well directed, quality films with engrossing storylines and scintillating cinematography.
Forget that the lead characters are faceless stars, not the kind coined and canned in Hollywood.
But boy! hasn't the fiesta showcased memorable flicks over the years!
Who will, for instance, ever forget the Italian entry of 1998, La Vita e Bela (Life is Beautiful)?
This brilliant whimsical comedy was written, directed and starred Benito Benigni as Jewish-Italian Guido Orefice and his farcical and fictitious ingenuity to help his son to survive life at a Nazi concentration camp.
This is Benigni's extremely funny and touching effort in which he co-starred with Dora (Nicolleta Braschi) as his wife with whom she won both the 1999 best foreign actor and best foreign language Oscar awards.
The film's title was borrowed from Russian Leon Trosky's Last Testament, written when the revolutionary was exiled in Mexico:
".... I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere.
"Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
And the festival's filmgoers will enjoy-hopefully to the full- the "evil, oppression and violence" in some of the flicks, while being tickled silly in others, the bulk of them being films that have won awards in festivals around the world."
Just like Life is Beautiful, the Second World War, has been one bottomless pit where directors have continued to mine some of the finest stories put on celluloid.
And this year is no different.
Czech Jan Hrebejk's Musime Si Pomahat (Divided We Fall) is one such film that is based on a true story of Josef and Marie, a childless couple who house their former Jewish neighbour who had escaped from a concentration camp during the Second World War.
To divert the attention of the German authorities, Josef takes up a job with Horst, a colleague turned Nazi collaborator. But, Horst starts to make advances to Marie besides visiting the couple without notice and at odd hours.
Divided We Fall was nominated for the 2001 Oscars for the best foreign language film.
Swedish offering
Then there is Swedish offering Den Svarta Nejlikan (The Black Pimpernel), a 2007 film based on again, the true story of Harald Edelstam, the Swedish ambassador to Chile, and his attempt to prevent innocent people from being executed during the 1973 Chilean military coup.
Edelstam, who died in 1989, saved hundreds of lives, but suddenly found the life of newfound love on the throes of a death penalty issued by the new military regime of Augusto Pinochet.
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There are more than coups and concentration camps in this festival as other films are themed along the hip-hop culture, family, political turbulence, the innocence of youth, the madness of friendship and exploration of young and old love.
Others are on the comic trials and tribulations of fortune seekers such as Danish director Lars von Trier's 2006 film, Direktøren for Det Hele (The Boss of it all) - about a businessman who founded a company with a fictitious President behind whom he could hide when making unpopular decisions.
And so when the potential purchaser insists on negotiating with the "president" face to face, the owner stakes his chance on a failed actor to play the part.
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